The bell rings again.

My mom half rises from her chair.

Carla stands all the way up.

The bell sounds for a third time. I smile for no reason.

"Want me to get it, ma'am?" Carla asks.

My mom waves her off. "Stay here," she says to me.

Carla moves to stand behind me, her hands pressing down lightly on my shoulder. I know I should stay here. I know I'm expected to. Certainly I expect me to, but somehow, today, I just can't. I need to know who it is, even if it's just a wayward traveler.

Carla touches my upper arm. "Your mother said to stay here."

"But why? She's just being extra cautious. Besides, she won't let anyone past the air lock."

She relents, and I'm off down the hallway with her right behind me.

The air lock is a small sealed room surrounding the front door. It's airtight so that no potential hazards can leak into the main house when the front door is open. I press my ear against it. At first I can't hear anything over the air filters, but then I hear a voice.

"My mom sent a Bundt." The voice is deep and smooth and definitely amused. My brain is processing the word Bundt, trying to get an image of what it looks like before it dawns on me just who is at the door. Olly.

"The thing about my mom's Bundts is that they are not very good. Terrible. Actually inedible, very nearly indestructible. Between you and me."

A new voice now. A girl's. His sister? "Every time we move she makes us bring one to the neighbor."

"Oh. Well. This is a surprise isn't it? That's very nice. Please tell her thank you very much for me."

There's no chance that this Bundt cake has pa.s.sed the proper inspections, and I can feel my mom trying to figure out how to tell them she can't take the cake without revealing the truth about me.

"I'm sorry, but I can't accept this."

There's a moment of shocked silence.

"So you want us to take it back?" Olly asks disbelievingly.

"Well, that's rude," Kara says. She sounds angry and resigned, as though she'd expected disappointment.

"I'm so sorry," my mom says again. "It's complicated. I'm really very sorry because this is so sweet of you and your mom. Please thank her for me."

"Is your daughter home?" Olly asks quite loudly, before she can close the door. "We're hoping she could show us around."

My heart speeds up and I can feel the pulse of it against my ribs. Did he just ask about me? No stranger has just dropped by to visit me before. Aside from my mom, Carla, and my tutors, the world barely knows I exist. I mean, I exist online. I have online friends and my Tumblr book reviews, but that's not the same as being a real person who can be visited by strange boys bearing Bundt cakes.

"I'm so sorry, but she can't. Welcome to the neighborhood, and thank you again."

The front door closes and I step back to wait for my mom. She has to remain in the air lock until the filters have a chance to purify the foreign air. A minute later she steps back into house. She doesn't notice me right away. Instead she stands still, eyes closed with her head slightly bowed.

"I'm sorry," she says, without looking up.

"I'm OK, Mom. Don't worry."

For the thousandth time I realize anew how hard my disease is on her. It's the only world I've known, but before me she had my brother and my dad. She traveled and played soccer. She had a normal life that did not include being cloistered in a bubble for fourteen hours a day with her sick teenage daughter.

I hold her and let her hold me for a few more minutes. She's taking this disappointment much harder than I am.

"I'll make it up to you," she says.

"There's nothing to make up for."

"I love you, sweetie."

We drift back into the dining room and finish dinner quickly and, for the most part, silently. Carla leaves and my mom asks if I want to beat her at a game of Honor Pictionary, but I ask for a rain check. I'm not really in the mood.

Instead, I head upstairs imagining what a Bundt cake tastes like.

Piece de Rejection.

Back in my room, I go immediately to my bedroom window. The dad is home from work and something's wrong because he's angry and getting angrier by the second. He grabs the Bundt cake from Kara and throws it hard at Olly, but Olly's too fast, too graceful. He dodges, and the cake falls to the ground.

Remarkably the Bundt seems unharmed, but the plate shatters against the driveway. This only makes this dad angrier.

"You clean that up. You clean that up right now." He slams into the house. His mom goes after him. Kara shakes her head at Olly and says something to him that makes his shoulders slump. Olly stands there looking at the cake for a few minutes. He disappears into the house and returns with a broom and dustpan. He takes his time, way longer than necessary, sweeping up the broken plate.

When he's done he climbs to the roof, taking the Bundt with him, and it's another hour before he swings back into his room.

I'm hiding in my usual spot behind the curtain when I suddenly no longer want to hide. I turn on the lights and go back to the window. I don't even bother to take a deep breath. It's not going to help. I pull the curtain aside to find that he's already there in his window, staring right at me. He doesn't smile. He doesn't wave. Instead, he reaches his arm overhead and pulls the blind closed.

Survival.

"How long are going to mope around the house?" Carla asks. "You've been like this all week."

"I'm not moping," I say, though I've been moping a little. Olly's rejection has made me feel like a little girl again. It reminded me why I stopped paying attention to the world before.

But trying to get back to my normal routine is hard when I can hear all the sounds of the outside world. I notice things that I paid very little attention to before. I hear the wind disturbing the trees. I hear birds gossiping in the mornings. I see the rectangles of sunlight that slip through my blinds and work their way across the room throughout the day. You can mark time by them. As much as I'm trying to keep the world out, it seems determined to come in.

"You've been reading the same five pages in that book for days now." She nods at my copy of Lord of the Flies.

"Well, it's a terrible book."

"I thought it was a cla.s.sic."

"It's terrible. Most of the boys are awful and all they talk about is hunting and killing pigs. I've never been so hungry for bacon in my life."

She laughs, but it's halfhearted at best. She sits on the couch next to me and moves my legs into her lap. "Tell me," she says.

I put the book down and close my eyes. "I just want them to go away," I confess. "It was easier before."

"What was easier?"

"I don't know. Being me. Being sick."

She squeezes my leg. "You listen to me now. You're the strongest, bravest person I know. You better believe that."

"Carla, you don't have to-"

"Shush, listen to me. I've been thinking this over. I could see this new thing was weighing down on you, but I know you're going to be all right."

"I'm not so sure."

"That's OK. I can be sure for both of us. We've been together in this house for fifteen years, so I know what I'm talking about. When I first started with you I thought it was only a matter of time before depression would take you over. And there was that one summer when it came close, but it didn't happen. Every day you get up and learn something new. Every day you find something to be happy about. Every single day you have a smile for me. You worry more about your mother than you do about yourself."

I don't think Carla has ever said this many words all at once.

"My own Rosa," she continues, but then stops. She leans back and closes her eyes in the grip of some emotion I don't understand. "My Rosa could learn a thing or two from you. She has everything I could give her, but she thinks she has nothing."

I smile. Carla complains about her daughter, but I can tell she spoils her as much as she can.

She opens her eyes and whatever was bothering her pa.s.ses. "You see, there's that smile again." She pats my leg. "Life is hard, honey. Everyone finds a way."

Life is Short.

Spoiler Reviews by Madeline.

LORD OF THE FLIES by WILLIAM GOLDING.

Spoiler alert: Boys are savages.

First Contact.

Two days pa.s.s and I've stopped moping. I'm getting better at ignoring the neighbors when I hear a ping coming from outside. I'm on my couch, still mired in Lord of the Flies. Mercifully, I'm close to finishing. Ralph is on the beach awaiting a violent death. I'm so eager for the book to end so that I can read something else, something happier, that I ignore the sound. A few minutes later and there's another ping, louder this time. I put the book down and listen. Pings three, four, and five come in rapid succession. Something's. .h.i.tting my window. Hail? I'm up and at my window before I can think better of it. I push the curtains aside.

Olly's window is wide open, the blinds are up, and the lights are off in his room. The indestructible Bundt is sitting on his windowsill wearing googly eyes that are staring right at me. The cake trembles and then tilts forward, as if contemplating the distance to the ground. It retreats and trembles some more. I'm trying to see Olly in his darkened room when the Bundt leaps from the sill and plunges to the ground.

I gasp. Did the cake just commit suicide? I crane my neck to see what's become of it, but it's too dark to see.

Just then a spotlight illuminates the cake. Unbelievably, it's still intact. What is that thing made of? It's probably best that we didn't try to eat it.

The light goes out and I look up just in time to catch Olly's black-clad hand and flashlight retreat into the window. I stay for a few minutes, watching and waiting for him to come back, but he doesn't.

Night Two.

I'm just settling in to bed when the pings begin again. I am determined to ignore him, and I do. Whatever he wants I can't do. It's easier not to know.

I don't go to the window that night or the next.

Night Four.

I can't stand it. I peek out from the corner of my curtains.

The Bundt is sitting on the sill, Band-Aids and bandages covering half its body. Olly is nowhere to be found.

Night Five.

The Bundt is sitting on a table next to the window. There's a martini gla.s.s filled with green liquid, a pack of cigarettes, and a pill bottle with a skull and crossbones label. Another suicide attempt?